Save the Wiki NOW
 

Lately I've been despamming the wiki. I'm not a coder or programmer so I figure it's a good way for a player to help out a little.

We are in serious danger of losing the wiki to the spammers completely over time. Most of the spammers are passive; they just add spam to the page. Now they're deleting the data and replacing it with spam. How do I know this? Because when I open a page where I've deleted the spam before and there's no note or data left there, the only reasonable conclusion is that the spammer replaced it with their garbage. Today I found four (out of the fourteen I cleaned up) pages like that.

It's time to *seriously* lock it down. Either block the spammers or limit editing access to the page owner plus a few trusted people (who will actually stay on top of it) to whom changes can be submitted, then added. If this isn't done soon, we may as well kiss the wiki goodbye now.

I totally agree. I am really new to the emu thing and the wiki has been my best friend. I am also tired of seeing 10k+ links to garbage and other things on the pages. I am to the point I was about to get an account just to wipe out all the junk. Also on that line, if I have an account to take out the junk someone else has one to put it back in! So yes, I totally agree.

I cleaned up the rest of the spammed pages. Would it be of any help if I listed the pages and page owners here that no longer have data as I go along?

These bots, spiders, scripts, whatever... are nothing but a blight on the internet society bent on causing destruction and chaos wherever they go. None of those links or ads actually lead to anything, therefore it is safe to assume every forum that is beaten up by them is nothing shy of a Denial of Service attack.

The admins here would make a full-time career out of blocking IPs and entire subnets from accessing the site, and some innocent visitors would get caught in the cross fire. Locking the Wiki really cannot be done, from what I understand, without again screwing the casual visitor who really wants to help out by updating it properly.

It is just sad to learn more and more about the people behind these invasive, destructive actions. What little regard they have for anyone elses property or general enjoyment. There isn't even legal recourse, since they are mostly out of reach of the long arm of OUR laws.

I don't control the wiki but I believe those that do know about the issue. Think some measures were put in place a little while ago but doesn't look like it was enough.

Require a valid e-mail to auth an account for it.... 99% of the spammers WILL go away.

Meh, previously I would agree. But I run a dozen forums that - even with visual confirmation AND validation emails - they still get in. HotManSexFromRussia, anyone?

Seems to me it's time ask ourselves if keeping it totally open is worth the risk of losing the whole thing. It only takes one malicious spammer, and it's already happening on a small scale. I would think/hope that *any* casual visitor would understand the need to protect the data, some of which could be their own contribution.

I do not know how this WakkaWikki thing works (I am a big MediaWiki fan and supporter). But if there were a way to lock down say, the core Wiki pages from being edited by anyone other than a dev/admin, that could help. But again, requires effort... which so far, only a few site visitors seem interested in doing.

- perhaps have a script that checks what the user adds - like unusual links or typical BOT links, something that looks odd and then put that IP on the watch list. There has to be a more smart check that would work.


GeorgeS

Fighting bots with bots... Why does that scare me a little?

WOPR says, "Would you like to play a game?"

I think more people would be interested in helping out the wiki if it was locked down to some reasonable point. People have stated that the reason they don't bother with it right now is because of the futility of the situation as is.

What if their was a block on passwords that are attempted to be reused after an account has been banned? I'd bet that the spammers' bots use the same one when they create a new account after being banned. A nice, vague message "the login information you have provided is invalid" could be displayed to dismay of the spammer, the idea being that the less you say about what didn't work means the more work they have to do to figure it out and get in. It might mean that at some point a valid user's password might not work, but what are the odds?

I'll bet that with all the programming talent around here that figuring out how to accomplish this would be cake.

I didn't say all... I said most, friend.

It will at least calm the storm a little and buy time to figure out a better solution.

I would agree to the wiki being controled by a few people, who have made changes and consistently do it.

However the only people able to admin the wiki is the developers, and well read he other thread about that.